Lightning Giving Games

EA has a tremendous breadth of cause areas. This version highlights the fact and shows how difficult it can be to choose between different cause areas.

Cons:

• Some participants immediately dismiss cause areas they don’t think are important or choose the cause area they already like the best without engaging with the details about the charity

• Some participants might find the charities too different and dislike having to compare

Charity ideas:

• One global health and poverty charity (e.g. GiveWell-recommended charities like Against Malaria Foundation or GiveDirectly)

• One animal charity (e.g. Animal Charity Evaluators-recommended charities like The Humane League)

• One charity that aims to reduce catastrophic risks e.g. Climate charity such as Coalition for Rainforest Nations or a Pandemic Risk charity such as John Hopkins Center for Health Security, both recommended by Founders Pledge)

Notes on choosing charities:

• We recommend avoiding meta-EA charities. For meta-EA charities to be appealing, a person has to buy into EA’s importance.

• Avoid charities whose function and merit would take a while to explain. For example, we don’t recommend choosing an AI Safety charity because many people won’t immediately agree that AI is a large threat to humanity.

• Harvard EA conducted an experiment looking at the effect of using more speculative charities such as 80,000 Hours and Machine Intelligence Research Institute. They found that those charities are less likely to produce email list sign-ups than global health charities.

Resources:

• This document has posters for running a Lightning Giving Game with the Against Malaria Foundation, the Humane League, and the John Hopkins Centre for Health Security.

There can be a vast wide difference in effectiveness between charities. This version shows that we can’t trust our gut feelings to give us an accurate indication of whether a charity is harmful or helpful.

Cons:

• Only covers one cause area. To counter this, it would help to have a variety of posters representing different cause areas on your table.

• Takes time. For this approach to work properly, facilitators will have to take a few minutes to explain the game and help people make an informed decision. It could be off-putting for someone to find that their charity of choice doesn’t do much good at all.

Charity ideas:

• One appealing but ineffective or harmful charity

  • PlayPumps is a popular option (more information on PlayPumps)

• One effective global health charity

  • Against Malaria Foundation (recommended by GiveWell)

  • GiveDirectly (recommended by GiveWell)

  • Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water which is a good contrast to PlayPumps since they both aim to provide clean water (a recipient of GiveWell's Maximum Impact Fund)

A note on choosing charities

We recommend avoiding using Guide Dog charities or other particularly well-loved local charities in Giving Games. These charities’ interventions indeed tend to cost a lot of money for comparatively less benefit. However, pointing out their flaws can be offputting for people who have benefitted from the charity, either directly, or through family and friends.

How the game could work:

• This resource has two pages per charity. Show the first “initial information” page, state that this is the sort of advertising information a charity might use, and explain what each of the charities does. Make sure you are positive about both charities.

• Get people to pick which charity they’d choose based on this information.

• Then flip the pages over to show the “evidence” information, and explain what the evidence shows.

• Allow people to ask questions.

• Ask people to make their final choice.

• More information and FAQs for these two charities are here.

Choosing between charities is difficult. This version allows people to use data to inform their choices.

Cons:

• Only covers one cause area. To counter this, it would help to have a variety of posters representing different cause areas on your table.

Charity ideas:

• Three effective global health charities

  • Against Malaria Foundation (recommended by GiveWell)

  • GiveDirectly (recommended by GiveWell)

  • Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (recommended by GiveWell)

  • Helen Keller International (recommended by GiveWell)

Notes on choosing charities:

• GiveDirectly is a good charity to include because their approach contrasts with disease prevention charities and often sparks good discussions.

Resources:

• Giving Game materials - this is for a long giving game involving the Against Malaria Foundation, GiveDirectly and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. You can trim the charity information to make it a Lightning Giving Game.